(With thanks to my dear fiendish_thingy for assistance with this entry.)
As I've noted, this ARW tour is a bit light on the official merchandise (or "the merch" as it is normally referred to) but there's something interesting I noticed about the images selected for one of the t-shirts; the only shirt on offer I actually desire, as a fan and collector, to own.
The merchandise was designed - as were the ARW and "new" Yes logos - by Jay Nungesser of Big Blur Design (who also created the logo for AndersonPonty Band) and for this shirt Nungesser utilized photos of the boys in their Yes glory years, which all previously appeared in the tourbook for the Around the World in Eighty Dates tour in 1991. The photo of Trevor is immediately recognizable as being from 1987, his choice of performance attire for The BIG Tour was a leather suit (and thus began a thousand wisecracks regarding "Leather Trevor," but to his credit Trevor wasn't afraid to lampoon himself about this as well). And the other nod to YesWest is the CMYK color scheme of 90125 in the choice of colors for the logo. But the photos of Jon and Rick are both from 1978. Besides the odd coincidence of the reversal of the digits, the truly weird thing about all this is in their respective photos Jon and Trevor are each 33 years old. Rick, on the other hand, is a veritable babe at 29 - as he was out of the band by the time he was 33 one supposes Wakey had to settle for an era-appropriate selection.
Given that Yes t-shirts from most eras do not display likenesses of the band, this is an interesting choice of visual iconography (although the t-shirts sold during Trevor's 1989 club tour did feature him prominently) and also because these are images which long-time fans would be able to associate with the last time our boys were all onstage together. For a legacy tour which means to revive the affection we have for Yes music and history, it is fitting (or at least as fitting as one hopes their t-shirt will be).
